Amerikastudien / American Studies 61.2 ★ Reviews
Heike Brandt, Invented Traditions: Die
Puritaner und das amerikanische Sendungsbewusstsein. [Schriften der Forschungsstelle
Grundlagen Kulturwissenschaft. Bd. 4] (N. P.:
Verlag Karl Stutz, 2011), 292 pp.
“Uppon the first sight of New-England, June
29, 1638”
Hayle holy-land wherin our holy lord
Hath planted his most true and holy word
Hayle happye people who have dispossest
Your selves of friends, and meanes, to find
some rest
For your poore wearied soules, opprest of late
For Jesus-sake
…
Come my deare little flocke, who for my sake
Have lefte your Country, dearest friends, and
goods
And hazarded your lives o’th raginge floods
Posses this Country; free from all anoye
Heare I’le bee with you, hear you shall Injoye
My Sabbaths, sacraments, my minestrye
And ordinances in their puritye.
Thomas Tillam
Escaped from the house of bondage, Israel of
old did not follow after the ways of the Egyptians. To her was given an express dispensation; to her were given new things under the
sun. And we Americans are the peculiar, chosen people—the Israel of our time; we bear
the ark of the liberties of the world. Seventy
years ago we escaped from thrall; and, besides
our first birthright—embracing one continent
of earth—God has given to us, for a future
inheritance, the broad domains of the political pagans, that shall yet come and lie down
under the shade of our ark, without bloody
hands being lifted. God has predestinated,
mankind expects, great things from our race;
and great things we feel in our souls. The rest
of the nations must soon be in our rear. We are
the pioneers of the world; the advance-guard,
sent on through the wilderness of untried
things, to break a new path in the New World
that is ours. … Long enough, have we been
skeptics with regard to ourselves, and doubted whether, indeed, the political Messiah had
come. But he has come in us, if we would but
give utterance to his promptings. And let us
always remember that with ourselves, almost
for the first time in the history of earth, national selfishness is unbounded philanthropy;
for we can not do a good to America but we
give alms to the world.
Herman Melville, White-Jacket (1850)
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Intellectuals wince at the jingoistic rhetoric prevalent in American oratory, especially
when unctuous politicians running for high
office invoke lofty metaphors of the “Citty
upon a Hill”: We Americans are a chosen
people on an errand to bring freedom and
democracy to the world. Thomas Tillam and
Herman Melville—each in their own way and
for different reasons—are no exception to this
rule. In fact, their versions of manifest destiny
embody these matters perfectly.1
Much has been written on the topic in academic journals and monographs—at least
since the Puritan “Errand into the Wilderness” (1956) was made famous in Perry Miller’s eponymous thesis. It has governed much
of the historical discourse in the second half
of the twentieth century before revisionist historians questioned its soundness. 2 Briefly, in
his essay on the Puritan “errand,” the doyen
of early American intellectual history postulated a fundamental difference between the
Pilgrims’s exodus to New Plymouth and the
migration of John Winthrop’s Puritans to the
Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Pilgrims under William Bradford, Miller claims, “were
reluctant voyagers; they had never wanted to
leave England, but had been obliged to depart because the authorities made life impossible for Separatists. … [T]hey did not go to
Holland as though on an errand; neither can
Thomas Tillam (d. c. 1674), a Baptist
preacher and Fifth Monarchist, did not stay
long in New England and eventually settled a
community of fellow Saturday sabbatarians in
Heidelberg (Germany).
2
Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness
(1956; rpt. New York: Harper & Row, Publ.,
1964), pp. 1-25. The most prominent example
of how Miller’s thesis fostered subsequent
scholarship is Sacvan Bercovitch’s The Puritan Origins of the American Self (New Haven:
Yale UP, 1975). On the economic and political “push” and “pull” factors for emigration
to New England, see David Cressy’s Coming
Over: Migration and Communication Between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1987). On the quest for pure religion as
the principal reason for joining the Great Migration to New England, see Virginia DeJohn
Anderson’s New England’s Generation: The
Great Migration and the Formation of Society
and Culture in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991), pp. 37-46.
1
Reviews ★ Amerikastudien / American Studies 61.2
we extract the notion of a mission out of the
reason which, as Bradford tells us, persuaded
them to leave Leyden for ‘Virginia.’” Conversely, the great migration of the Puritans
under John Winthrop, Miller continues, is a
horse of a different color: The Massachusetts
Bay colonists were not just adventurers questing for economic opportunities in the New
World, but “an organization of immigrants”
with “a positive sense of mission”; they were
either “sent on an errand or it had its own intention, but in either case the deed was deliberate. It was an act of will, perhaps of willfulness. These Puritans were not driven out of
England,” Miller insists, because “thousands
of their fellows” remained behind and opposed Charles I; those who went to America
left “on their own accord.”3
As is well known, Miller grounds his thesis on John Winthrop’s lay-sermon “Modell
of Christian Charity” ostensibly preached
aboard his flagship Arbella upon the fleet’s
departure from Southampton in 1630. It has
become the “Ur-text” for American exceptionalism and the much-touted “Citty upon a
Hill”—patriotic tropes perennially summoned
at Presidential inaugurations and political
rallies. Ironically, if Winthrop’s “Modell” is
indeed such a foundational document in the
Puritan exodus to America, none of his contemporaries—not even those on board of the
Arbella—mention they heard him deliver the
sermon nor refer to it in their private or public
communications, but once. As Winthrop’s distinguished biographer, Francis Bremer, points
out, the only extant reference to the sermon
is that by the English nonconformist minister Henry Jacie, or Jessey (1603-63), who in
a letter to John Winthrop, Jr., (c. Feb. 1635),
requested “copies of a number of papers relating to the colony, including ‘the Model
of Charity.’”4 More telling, Winthrop, Sen.,
himself does not mention this document or
speech in his own Journal (1630-1649) or correspondence—neither does John White, in his
Planters Plea or the Grounds of Plantations
Miller, Errand, pp. 3, 4 (italics added).
Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop:
America’s Forgotten Founding Father (New
York: Oxford UP, 2003), pp. 174, 431 n3. For
Jessey’s letter, see “Henry Jacie to John Winthrop, Jr.,” Winthrop Papers III, 1631-1637.
Edited by Allyn Bailey Forbes (Boston: The
Massachusetts Historical Society, 1943),
3:188-89.
3
4
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Examined (1630), nor Edward Johnson (both
passengers on Winthrop’s flagship Arbella), in
his Wonder-Working Providence (1654), nor
William Hubbard, in his General History (wr.
1682; publ. 1815), nor Cotton Mather, either
in his famous biography of Winthrop or anywhere else in his Magnalia Christi Americana
(1702) for that matter, nor Daniel Neal, in his
History of New-England (1720), nor Thomas
Prince, in his Chronological History (1736),
nor Thomas Hutchinson, in his History of the
Colony of Massachusetts (1764). In fact, the
only extant copy of Winthrop’s “Modell” is a
manuscript fragment (not in his own hand) apparently circulated in England before his departure to New England. 5 However, the documents that were cited (and reprinted) several
times in Winthrop’s time and thereafter are
John Cotton’s Gods Promise to His Plantation (London, 1630) and The Humble Request
(London, 1630); the former, a farewell sermon
preached in Southampton to Winthrop’s departing fleet; the latter, an apologia (attributed to Rev. John White), addressed “To the
rest of their Brethren, in and of the Church
of England,” dated “From Yarmouth aboord
the Arbella, April 7. 1630,” and signed by Gov.
John Winthrop and several other Puritan
leaders.6 Arguably, then, Perry Miller’s grand
5
The Journal of John Winthrop 16301649. Edited by Richard S. Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle (Cambridge: The
Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1996), p. 2, n
11; Bremer, John Winthrop, pp. 174-75, 431,
n 4. Internal evidence from the “Model,” in
which Winthrop refers to “here in England”
(“Modell of Christian Charity,” in Winthrop
Papers II, 1623-1660. Edited by Stewart
Mitchell [Boston: The Massachusetts Historical Society, 1931]), 2:282-95 (quote appears on
p. 287), indicates that it was most likely delivered before his departure. See Hugh J. Dawson’s perceptive article, “John Winthrop’s
Rite of Passage: The Origins of the ‘Christian
Charitie’ Discourse,” Early American Literature 26 (1991): 219-31. Bremer credibly argues
that it was delivered in Southampton’s “Holy
Rood Church and on a lecture day” (pp. 173,
431-32, n 9).
6
The Humble Request (London, Printed
of John Bellamie, 1630), p. 10. In Mather’s
time, this apologia was incorporated in the
manuscript of Hubbard’s “General History”
and subsequently reprinted in Boston (1815,
1848), pp. 126-28. Cotton Mather gives an ex-
Amerikastudien / American Studies 61.2 ★ Reviews
thesis founded on Winthrop’s “Modell” bears
little resemblance to the regard (or rather disregard) Winthrop or his contemporaries were
paying to this document. In fact, the manuscript fragment was completely forgotten and
was not printed until more than two hundred
years later.7
Much the same objection has been raised
against Winthrop’s trope “a Citty upon a hill,”8
a biblical metaphor adapted from the Sermon
on the Mount (Matth. 5:14) and frequently associated with the celestial “New Jerusalem”
(Rev. 21:2) in Puritan eschatology. Come
the millennium (so the argument goes), this
shining city of God would come down from
heaven, and Christ would govern his saints for
a thousand years from his base in America,
most likely from Puritan Boston.9 After all,
did not Cotton Mather explicitly say so in his
Magnalia Christi (1702) and in his Theopolis
Americana (1710)? As a matter of fact, he did
not. By now versions of this pious myth proliferated in the scholarship since the 1970s are
so entrenched in our national mythology that
no matter how carefully historians have contextualized evidence to the contrary, this venerable legend remains as American as apple
pie. Ironically, these biblical metaphors were
hardly unique in the homiletic literature of the
time. Francis Bremer and several of his predecessors have shown that “Matthew’s images of
a city on a hill, lights, and candlesticks were
widely employed in Winthrop’s England.”10
tract of the apologia, in Magnalia (bk. 1, ch. 5,
p. 20, § 2); and Thomas Hutchinson reprints
the short apologia as the first item in his “Appendix” to The History of the Colony (Boston,
1764), pp. 487-89.
7
It was first published in the Collections
of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Third
series (Boston, 1838) 7:33-48, and since then
more often anthologized than most other documents in American literature.
8
Winthrop’s “Modell” (Winthrop Papers 2:295).
9
For a detailed listing of historians who
identify Boston with the millennial New Jerusalem and Winthrop’s city upon a hill, see
Reiner Smolinski, “‘Israel Redivivus’: The
Eschatological Limits of Puritan Typology in
New England,” New England Quarterly 63.3
(1990): 390-93.
10
Bremer, John Winthrop, p. 181, cited
several examples; see also Theodore D. Bozeman, “The Puritans’ ‘Errand into the WilderAmerikastudien / American Studies 61. Jg., ISSN 0340-2827
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These metaphors were, indeed, so commonplace in Elizabethan and Jacobean sermons
that even John Cotton’s closing admonition
reminded those en route to Massachusetts,
“be not unmindfull of our Ierusalem at home,
whether you leave us, or stay at home with
us.”11 In short, when Winthrop invoked in his
“Modell” the (by now) famous comparison,
“wee must Consider that wee shall be as a
Citty upon a Hill” (295), he intended no more
than his clerical colleagues did in the Church
of England who warned their parishioners
that the church, like “a city that is set on a
hill cannot be hid” (Matth. 5:14, KJV), stands
exposed to God’s wrath. That Winthrop employed this reference in the same, essentially
negative, context as it appears in Matthew’s
gospel is fortuitously forgotten.
To be fair, why should such metaphoric niceties matter? It is perhaps one of those ironies
frequently encountered in history that horizons of expectations which reverberate among
one generation and in one age accrue radically
different meanings in another but are projected back in time as so-called foundational
myths. After all, it is a truism by now that we
reinvent the past in our own image when old
answers become trite and lose their potency,
or when new conditions demand revisions of
old myths to justify a present expediency.12
Such, then, is the topic of Heike Brandt’s Invented Traditions, a 2011 doctoral dissertaness’ Reconsidered,” New England Quarterly
59 (1986): 231-51, and his To Live Ancient
Lives, ch. 3; Andrew Delbanco, The Puritan Ordeal (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989),
esp. 72-73; Smolinski, “Israel Redivivus,”
pp. 357-61.
11
John Cotton, Gods Promise to His
Plantation (London, 1630), p. 18.
12
See, for instance, Bruce Tucker, “The
Reinterpretation of Puritan History in Provincial New England,” New England Quarterly 54.4 (1981): 481-98, who demonstrates
that when the Act of Toleration (1689) and
Massachusetts’ Second Charter (1691) irrevocably established religious toleration as the
new imperial policy, New England’s divines
rewrote the history of their conflict between
Puritans and Anglicans as a divinely ordained
plan not only to establish a refuge for dissenters in the New World at the beginning of the
seventeenth century but also to promote “an
Anglo-American Protestant union” at centuries end (482).
Reviews ★ Amerikastudien / American Studies 61.2
tion under the direction of Prof. Dr. Klaus P.
Hansen (Universität Passau) published in the
series Schriften der Forschungsstelle Grundlagen Kulturwissenschaft. Brandt’s Invented
Traditions explores the changing fortunes of
well-known religio-political tropes in American primary and secondary literature over a
period of 300 years.
In six chapters carefully crafted and amply
documented, Brandt traces the biblical concepts of “Spiritual Israel” as a “covenanted
people” under God on a westward “errand”
to bring the light of Christian civilization
into North America’s wilderness. As is well
known, this medieval theme of translatio
studii et imperii—celebrated in George Herbert’s poem “The Church Militant” (1633)—
attained new life in the homiletic literature
of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. It became a pervasive trope in American sermons,
histories, political speeches, and epics from
the colonial period to the present. In fact, its
adaptations reverberate in Tillam’s doggerel
and Melville’s antebellum novel just as much
as it does in the post-Obama era, when starstruck voters once again are to make up their
minds about which candidates’ hyperboles are
best suited for the White House. To be sure,
Heike Brandt’s monograph is not concerned
with the validity of America’s founding myths
nor their historical accuracy as much as she
surveys how they were rewritten and adapted
over time. Moreover, Brandt also provides a
running commentary on these issues based on
the prevalent historiography since the 1950s.
Invented Traditions, then, is not a contribution to revisionist scholarship in as much as it
provides a useful foundation for those unfamiliar with the debate.
In her first two chapters, Dr. Brandt delineates the concepts of Calvinist “Auserwähltheit und Sendung” as they were applied to the
Church of England as a whole on the eve of
the great migration to North America. The
Reformed among the Protestant churches, as
is well known, allegorized the “Israel-Paradigm,” God’s covenant with literal Israel, and
transferred it to themselves as God’s “Spiritual Israel.” Both Separatist and Puritan Nonconformists seeking refuge in New England
identified their cause with that of the apocalyptic “woman fleeing into the wilderness,”
the latter-day remnant of “Visible Saints,”
for whom God had prepared a hiding place
(Rev. 12:6) in the New World. Yet contrary to
modern adaptations of this prophecy, neither
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group envisioned a permanent settlement in
America, let alone claimed that New England
(or America) would be the locale of Christ’s
New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:2), his capital and
seat of judgment during his thousand-year
reign on earth. At best, they aimed at setting
up a “primitive church” on the model of the
pure teachings of the first-century Christian
church to set an example for the churches of
Europe. Besides, seventeenth-century millenarians looked toward Jerusalem in Palestine—not America—for the unfolding of
Christ’s terrestrial reign.
Chapter three “Entstehung einer protestantischen Geschichtsphilosophie und ihr
Einfluss auf Konzepte der Auserwähltheit
und Sendung bei den Puritanern” is an excursion into the history and evolution of the doctrine of millennialism, the belief in the Second
Coming of Jesus Christ and his thousand-year
reign, from St. Augustine’s “a-millennialism”
(Christ’s spiritual indwelling in the heart of
the faithful) to the eighteenth-century idea of
“post-millennialism” (Christ’s return at the
end of a progressively improving earthly society). More to the point, Brandt also covers
in this chapter the controversial exclusion of
the American hemisphere from the blessings
of Christ’s reign. An influential English millenarian, Joseph Mede had conjectured that
Christ’s kingdom would be confined to the
boundaries of the ancient Roman Empire in
the Old World, whereas America would be
the apocalyptic locale of outer darkness, the
place of the devil and the damned. How this
rejection of the New World rankled American
Puritans and their millenarian descendants
until the Second Great Awakening is sketched
in this chapter just as much as the arguments
of the principal combatants in this erstwhile
debate.
“Die heilsgeschichtliche Verortung Neuenglands,” “das Israel-Paradigma,” and “Republicanismus” as formulas of collective identity in the political homilies of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries are the focus of the
fourth through sixth chapters—the showpieces of the book. Here Brandt elucidates how
New England’s clerics responded to the tide of
Puritan reverse migration during Cromwell’s
Interregnum by redefining the avowed purpose of their errand in terms of missionizing
Native Americans. When the introduction of
the Half-Way Covenant (1662) failed to adequately address the declining admissions to
full church membership, the ministers touted
Amerikastudien / American Studies 61.2 ★ Reviews
the piety of the first generation as the gold
standard from which the rising generation had
fallen. The devastations of King Philip’s War
(1675/76) were hailed as God’s punishment for
communal backsliding, and the clergy countered with an avalanche of interminable jeremiads (the time-honored “carrot-and-stick”
approach) to redress New England’s depravities. The Glorious Revolution (1688) and the
Toleration Act (1689) both strengthened the
bonds of New England’s identity even as it
curbed the power of the de facto state church.
When itinerant preachers triggered massive
revivals and impromptu conversions during
the First Great Awakening (1735-43), Arminian New Lights battled with conservative Old
Lights and expanded the covenant to include
members on the sole bases of pious conduct
and moral behavior. The turmoil of the French
and Indian War (1756-63) triggered yet another widening of the church doors: God’s
covenanted people and their errand into the
wilderness were stretched to their limits by
including all faithful and morally upright
Americans in all colonies as long as they were
Protestants and prepared to rise against the
Roman Catholic Antichrist in French Canada.
If God’s original covenant excluded all but his
Visible Saints on their errand to worship him
in liberty of conscience, then the Stamp-Act
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crisis (1765/66) leading up to the American
Revolution prompted yet another redefinition: the intrinsic rights of the American colonists to freedom, liberty, and property were
safeguarded by nothing less than the Magna
Carta, and the English Parliament’s endeavor
to curtail these civil liberties was tantamount
to a breach of contract between George III
and his erstwhile American subjects. In short,
the tropes of God’s New English Israel and
their errand into the wilderness proved concepts pliable enough to be reconfigured and
reinvented as the need arose. In the filiopietistic rhetoric of America’s civic and ecclesiastical leaders, they still resonate when citizens
are called upon to go to the polls.
Aside from the missing index and inconsistent collation of footnote references and
bibliography, Heike Brandt’s Invented Traditions: Die Puritaner und das amerikanische
Sendungsbewusstsein is a lucidly written and
well-documented survey on identity formation in American homiletic literature. If its
contribution to this by now dated debate is
diminished by the want of an original thesis,
Invented Traditions is, nonetheless, a reliable
guide to the scholarship on the Puritan errand
since the 1960s.
Atlanta (USA)
Reiner Smolinski